Michele Geraci

Prof Michele Geraci is former Undersecretary of State at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, responsible for International Trade and Investment, in the Conte I cabinet Prior to that, he lived for ten years in China where he worked as macro-economist and prof of finance in various universities. Prior to moving to China in 2008, Mr Geraci lived in London for 20 years working as Top Investment Banker in the City of London year and as Electronic Engineer. In 2018, he was one of the nominees for Italy’s Prime Minister, before taking the role as under-secretary. He is a frequent guest on major international media and conference and has been awarded Italian Knighthood honor by Italian President Mattarella. He holds an MBA from MIT Sloan. He speaks 5 languages, including Chinese

During his role of Undersecretary of State, Mr Geraci was in charge of international trade and investment at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development in the Conte Administration since June 2018. Due to his China’s expertise, he was the main architect in the first G7 Belt and Road MOU signed between Italy and China in March 2018 during President Xi’s visit to Italy. In his first year as Undersecretary of State, he set up a “Task Force China”, a cross-ministerial forum to exchange views and develop a commercial strategy to improve trade with China and developed a new system-based strategy to market Italian products around the world using a core-and-satellite approach. In response to the rampant trade liberalization that tends to penalize the weakest and the least flexible, Prof Geraci set up a Task Force on the Analysis of Free Trade Agreements, to quantify the economic impact of each such FTA, a study never done before in Italy. He is also playing a more active role in all international government events, such as G20, to ensure that the interest of Italy is best represented. The full summery of this activities as Undersecretary of State is available in www.michelegeraci.com

While in China for a decade, Mr Geraci worked as a professor of finance and economist. He was Assistant Professor of Finance at Nottingham University Business School, China, Head of China at the Global Policy Institute and Adjunct Professor of Finance at New York University, Shanghai and at Zhejiang University. Recently, Mr Geraci has also been awarded as Honorary Professor by School of Economics Peking University. His research work was aimed at governments, corporations, and investors, offering non-academic, practical-oriented policy recommendations and investment advice. Topics of interest included monetary policy, income disparity, migration, urbanisation and European crisis, international trade, M&A. As a China economist, Mr Geraci has been voted for four years in a row one of the top 50 Italian experts on Chinese matters by MilanoFinanza; one of the top 5 University of Nottingham experts on current affairs. He also teaches courses on China’s economy in Europe at LUISS (Rome) and Copenhagen Business School. He is the producer and host of a documentary on China’s economy and had a popular blog with the goal to enhance the knowledge of China amongst European and Italian policymakers, enterprises and the general public. He lived in China from 2008 to 2018.

Prior to China, Mr Geraci was an investment banker based in London. Over more than a decade between London and Wall Street, he worked in Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe in investment banks such as Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, DLJ, Schroders as co-head of European Telecom Research and Head of Latin America Telecom Research.

Before starting his career in finance, Mr Geraci worked as an electronic engineer in the Satellite planning manager division of British Telecom, London. He took part in the design of Eutelsat satellites that are used today to broadcast TV to Europe.

Mr Geraci holds an MBA from the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, under the guidance and friendship of Prof Modigliani and Rudy Dornbusch and an undergraduate degree in electronic engineering from the University of Palermo, Italy, with one year spent at UCL as exchange student. He speaks Italian, English, Chinese as well as Spanish and some French.